Measuring impacts of urban design solutions on citizens' sense of safety: Revitalizing back alleys in Hong Kong

Abstract

The back alley is common but often neglected urban space in high density cities. There are thousands of back alleys in Hong Kong, and many of them are avoided by citizens, especially females. The image of the back alley is often connected to being unhygienic, grey, chaotic, and encouraging crime and violence. In fact, many alleys have the potential to be valuable, benign spaces that can bring multiple benefits to citizens who are living in barren, crowed inner city. This photo-questionnaire study investigated possibilities of revitalizing the alleys on the basis of people’s perception of safety. One photo of existing site was shot and 15 photo simulations were produced for each of 5 back alleys. Then we randomly assigned 30 out of 80 photographs to each of 218 participants (125 online and 93 on-site; 124 females and 94 males) to obtain data on perceived safety. Data analysis show four main findings: green landscape can promote sense of safety, but the effect is limited; green landscape with formal style can promote greater sense of safety than that of natural style; presence of exercise facilities, shop, café or pocket park had significant effects on promoting sense of safety. Also, we found females had a lower sense of safety on existing back alleys than males. However, several design solutions such as the presence of café, shop, or pocket park did make that difference no longer exist.